Bad to Worse in France

Rioting has spread from Paris to the Mediterranean, with arson attacks in Avignon, Cannes and Nice, as well as to Strasbourg and Rouen. The attackers are evil people; a couple of days ago they doused a disabled woman with gasoline and set her afire. Today they torched a nursery school and interfered with rescue personnel:

In one attack, youths in the eastern Paris suburb of Meaux prevented paramedics from evacuating a sick person from a housing project. They pelted rescuers with rocks and then torched the waiting ambulance, an Interior Ministry official said.

More than 800 cars were burned last night. The French government has no idea what to do, nor do the news media have language suitable to the nightmare that has erupted over much of France. The AP gives us the usual platitudes:

The violence  originally concentrated in neighborhoods northeast of Paris with large immigrant populations  is forcing France to confront long-simmering anger in its suburbs, where many Africans and their French-born children live on society’s margins, struggling with unemployment, poor housing, racial discrimination, crime and a lack of opportunity.

Yeah, right. It’s the most natural thing in the world for an unemployed person to burn cars, destroy schools, and set helpless women on fire. The authorities need to get a grip on the situation, soon. And wringing their hands about “poor housing” and “racial discrimination” isn’t going to help. Napoleon’s remedy–a “whiff of grapeshot”–still works, but I doubt whether France has the courage to use it.

The issue is rapidly resolving into an existential one: does France have a future?